There are known in the art services for providing information on a program that is broadcast for viewing on a television. As such a service, in addition to a service for providing information by a printed publication, there is known a service for distributing information via the Internet, and a service for displaying program information on a main unit of a television receiver (hereinafter, simply referred to as a “television”) by use of an Electronic Program Guide (EPG). Additionally, JP2009-55095A describes a technique for providing a suggested viewing schedule of video content to a user based on a viewing history of the user.
Many program schedules provided in the art have uniform content. Such a program schedule may be inconvenient for a user in that it does not allow the user to view information about a program to be broadcast in the future, or to view information on a program that has already been broadcast. This restriction exists because such a program schedule allows viewing of information about a program only within a period during which such information is made available to a user by a provider.
On the other hand, while use of a technique as described in JP2009-55095A enables a user to acquire a viewing schedule based on an action of the user, the technique does not enable an action of a person other than the user to be reflected in the viewing schedule.